


A Peace That Can Be Stolen

by Carradee



Series: The Stage That Never Empties [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Resurrection, weird stuff is weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-08-30 04:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8518222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carradee/pseuds/Carradee
Summary: Mara Jade Skywalker had been murdered by her nephew.He died the following year, but she had no interest in tracking him down in the Force to figure out why he'd gone Sith. She was at peace for once, and her nephew turned murderer wasn’t going to ruin it. She was in the Light and staying there.That was still her foremost thought when she opened her eyes to a blurry medbay.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This series pulls from a lot of canon stuff (mainly Legends), slaps it together, adds some original stuff for the purpose of connecting logical threads, and is altogether weird.
> 
> There isn't really a schedule. I'm just posting these as I have 'em written.

Mara Jade Skywalker had been murdered by her nephew.

He’d gone Sith, she’d fought damn hard to stop him, and her failure might’ve had more to do with her age than it did with their comparative skills.

After dying, she kept her body corporeal on purpose, at least long enough for the autopsy, and she used the fading as a hint that Jacen was who’d killed her. Ben caught it, at least. Her son had always been bright, thoughtful.

He and his cousin would’ve gotten along so well, if she’d had him just a decade earlier. She still wasn’t quite sure what had broken Jacen to the point of developing to Darth Caedus. It was tempting to blame the Yuuzhan Vong, to blame Vergere, but that would’ve been too easy.

Jaina managed to kill him the next year. Jacen _let_ Jaina kill him.

Well, “let” from a certain point of view.

Mara could appreciate that, but she had no interest in tracking him down in the Force finding out the details or the whys. She was at peace for once, and her nephew turned murderer wasn’t going to ruin it.

She was in the Light and _staying there_.

That was still her foremost thought when she opened her eyes to a blurry medbay.

* * *

Mara wasn’t sure how long she lay there before someone noticed she was awake via a light Force pulse, but it didn’t feel like long. She didn’t recognize the Force signature, but at least it was a Lightsider.

“You’ve been in carbonite.” The voice was male, early or mid teens, and held a brisk professionalism unusual for someone that young.

“I’ve been _dead_ ,” she corrected, but his heads-up let her adjust blood flow to recover from hibernation sickness faster.

The boy hardly paused before lifting his databoard and making a note. “Glad to hear you say that. Most folks adapt better when they’ve put that together on their own.”

A chill ran through her at how cavalier he was about the prospect of resurrection. “What year is it?”

“Just a few after your death, I think. Not sure if that’s fortunate or not. Most of us had decades between…” He glanced to the door with a sharp jerk of his chin her blurred vision could catch, and he stepped away from her bedside.

Mara didn’t fail to catch his ‘us’, indicating that he been dead before, too.

A woman who felt about Mara’s age breezed in with the ease of someone younger. Her warped, splintered Force presence was a fabric full of shadows, made all the more dissonant by the bright one of the youth.

“Malreaux!” the woman said. “You came! I’m shocked they let you.”

He shrugged.

The woman paused, then came forward, offering him her hand. “So sorry. I forgot—I know so much more of you than you know of me. I’m Naksía.”

“You told me.”

“Did I? Huh. Well, time for the next stage, then. Have to give time for the mind and body to integrate… Is the carbon freezing chamber ready?”

“Already completed, and she’s awake.”

Naksía froze, let out a curse, and then asked grimly, “How much did I lose?”

“Just a few days.”

The woman sighed in both relief and annoyance. “That’s better than it could’ve been, but I was hoping I could at least finish—“

Malreaux cleared his throat, loudly and pointedly.

“Right,” she said. “You can’t know that.” She rubbed her forehead. “ _Kriff_. Well, at least Vos should be happy.”

Her vision had returned enough to read Malreaux’s confusion and curiosity. “What’s Master Vos have to with Master Jade Skywalker?”

Naksía slapped a palm over her eyes and gave a soft groan. “Okay. I’m never doing this alone again, because I apparently can’t watch my own words after.”

Malreaux just watched her.

“Okay, never doing it alone unless I have to.”

“You’re saying you resurrected me,” Mara said, deciding it was time to join the conversation.

“ _Yes_!” Naksía answered promptly, so cheerily that she was either oblivious to or blatantly ignoring the fact that she’d outright _stolen_ Mara from the Force. “I suspected it was gonna be needed, so I arranged to get some of your DNA a few decades back and grew that body in prep.”

Malreaux was wearing a little smile, and a thread of pale gray wound through his aura. “Did you really resurrect both your husbands and your father-in-law in the same week?”

Naksía’s irises flashed yellow. “They all _died_ ,” she snapped. “They weren’t supposed to leave me alone. It’s not safe for me to be alone.”

She frowned at him, the angle letting Mara confirm that the edges of her eyes showed a different age than her Force presence did. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Malreaux wasn’t going to answer that—Mara could tell that much just from his emotional state—so she took advantage of the opening to possibly catch the woman off-guard. “You killed yourself to be young again?”

“Why would I do that?” Naskía sounded genuinely _puzzled_. “Waste of a perfectly good body.”

_…Okay._

Malreaux, with the slightly pinched expression of someone who likewise found something odd but more time to come to terms with it, surreptitiously gestured to indicate that the woman’s previous, older one was down the hall, apparently preserved in stasis.

The comm panel on the wall beeped, and Naksía outright _flounced_ over to it. “Oh, excuse me while I take this!”

The woman left, and Mara and Malreaux considered each other.

He had a long, thin braid coming down the right of his hair, from behind his right ear. Hadn’t that once meant something? She couldn’t quite remember.

In any event, he was Lightsider, and friendly, and not a hair’s breadth from snapping into insanity.

“Help me out of this bed?” she asked. She wouldn’t learn anything by sitting around.

“Sure.”

* * *

Naksía had given her the body of a teenager. Mara wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or thankful for that—she was at a good age for redeveloping muscle memory and such, but it just broadened the physical age difference between her and any of her friends who still lived.

Naksía also owned the ship, apparently, but she kept to herself and didn’t seem to care what Mara did as long as she didn’t try to circumvent the Force and bio locks on the cockpit or on the room where the woman spent all her time doing…Force only knew what, since it was shielded.

With how the woman had outright stolen Mara out of the peace of the Force, Naksía’s avoidance of her was probably on purpose.

* * *

Malreaux’s given name was Whie, Mara found out, and he’d died in Operation Knightfall, when Darth Vader slaughtered the Jedi Temple.

“You’re very casual about this,” she observed, while she watched him prep lunch in the small kitchenette of the corvette they were in. Naksía’s instability warned her off trying to help, herself, for fear that the possibility of attempted poisoning might snap the woman into paranoia.

“From what I’ve been told,” Whie said, “it started a decade or so ago, and we’re not sure how or why it’s happening. We don’t even know if Lightsider or Darksider came first. We only found out Chancellor Palpatine was back, too, because General Skywalker and Senator Amidala escaped him.”

The titles rolled off his tongue with an ease that was perhaps the best evidence of his being from when he claimed.

“Started?” she asked, catching that this had been going on for a while.

And a decade ago, if she had the years right, was shortly before the Swarm Wars, which had been so busy and hectic in the Force that even Jedi they’d known could’ve resurrected without them noticing. They certainly hadn’t noticed that Raynar Thul was still alive.

Whie glanced towards the back of the ship, where Naksía was hanging out in the one room, aside from the cockpit, that she didn’t let them enter. “She’s not the one doing it. I mean, she’s brought back four that I know of, including you, but that’s why she’s crazy. Master Vos says she was okay until she brought the three of them back, and I saw a difference between before and after she brought back _you_.”

Mara accepted a bowl of soup from him. “About that…”

“What am I doing here?” He smiled, grabbing a bowl of his own, and they both sat at the table. “Officially, I’m not. I’m presumably researching and making contacts with potential trade suppliers.”

“A solo mission?” she asked. She didn’t add, _At your age?_

He tilted his head, answering _Sort of_. “My Master is a fantastic Healer, but that’s all she is, and I’m not sure I want to follow that path. Master Vos picked me up for this mission to fill in some gaps in my education. It’s reasonable to give me independent assignments to test what I’ve learned. As far as anyone knows, that’s where I am.”

“This Master Vos knows Naksía somehow?”

Whie hesitated. “I have no idea how or when they met. I just know he found out that Naksía was planning to raise you and thought it would be good for me to witness a method and its repercussions, if only to help me avoid doing it on accident.”

Mara lifted her eyebrows, silently asking _You’ve resurrected someone on accident?_

He frowned, staring at her, then let out a little sigh. “She encountered a Sith Adept. I fixed her body and yanked her back in before anyone saw. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know.”

“Girlfriend?”

“ _Friend_ ,” he said firmly. “For at least another few years.”

Mara smiled a little, though she’d thought the old Jedi Order had forbidden such relationships. “You two have plans once you’re adults again?”

Malreaux paused between bites and stared at his food.

“Whie?”

“I don’t love her yet,” he said, not looking up. “I like her, but I don’t love her.”

“If you don’t want to love her, you don’t have to let it grow that way.”

He sighed and swallowed a spoonful of broth. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.”

Mara was missing context, she realized, and she decided not to argue.

* * *

The resurrected Lightsiders and Darksiders were engaged in a war, one that they were currently keeping away from folks who hadn’t yet died.

Naksía tried to leave her out of it while she got used to being alive again, but Whie was remarkably forthright, even with the things he wouldn’t say.

As long as the resurrected folks kept the fight between them, it looked like two syndicates in conflict. The first one to seek to engage the universe at large would make itself vulnerable to the enemy and galaxy alike. Most folks would be angry or incredulous at best, and many would be gullible enough that the first one to go public would get blamed the odd events caused by the enemy, too.

She _couldn’t_ contact anyone she knew, because they’d seek to help and end up targets and scapegoats for the Darksiders, and according to Whie, nobody knew enough about who was back to be able to make a plan with a reasonable chance of _not_ blowing up in their faces.

Even if that weren’t the situation, her body was that of a young woman, not much older than her son. Getting back in touch would be far more cruel than kind, to all involved. The knowledge made her heart ache, but at least she could learn about all the no-longer-dead folks and see what she could do to protect those her family from the shadows.

* * *

One day, Mara entered the kitchenette to find a redhead who looked maybe a year older than Whie and felt more experienced than that. She was still younger than Mara, though their bodies were pretty close in age.

“Oh, hi,” the girl said. She got another mug from the cabinet and used the action of filling the mugs and setting them on the table to discreetly hide her scrutiny.

“Do I have something on my teeth?” Mara asked calmly.

“Enamel and plaque,” the girl replied immediately. “Yes, I was old Order. Yes, I survived Operation Knightfall. People call me Scout.”

So the girl had a sharp eye and was quick on the uptake. Good to know.

“You’re here for Whie?” Mara asked. Someone else working with ‘Master Vos’, she assumed.

“Yeah. You coming, too?”

Mara suffered no illusions that the old Jedi Order would be happy to see her—even Vergere had responded badly to the new Order’s ‘dynasty’—but she needed information, and cooperating with them would give her better access. The faster she learned, the sooner she could help her family from behind the scenes.

She smiled. “That sounds fantastic.”

* * *

Naskía must’ve spoken to the two young no-longer-dead Jedi, because she landed the ship in Mos Espa, Tatooine.

But Mara didn’t see her, and she didn’t even say goodbye.

* * *

Stepping off the ship where she’d spent the few weeks post-resurrection made Mara realize that the Force had felt like molassas, sticky and dim. Once she was off-ship, everything was back to crystal clarity…and she could detect nothing odd about the ship itself or its remaining occupant, even though she _knew_ that Naksía felt wrong, to meet her.

“Force shielding,” Whie said, as he dodged the nearby mechanics and led the way out, towards a gathering of Force energy that Mara could sense several blocks away. “I think I figured that out.”

“Not at the cost of sleep, I hope,” she answered, referencing the bags under his eyes.

“No,” he agreed, ruefully.

Scout gave him a sharp look. “What did you see?”

Whie paused. “Nothing I want to talk about yet.”

Mara glanced at Scout, to get a hint for what he meant by that. The girl was accepting and only a little sad, so it was something that could wait for clarification.

“Are we going to see Master Vos?”

“Nah,” Scout said easily. “Best to take you straight to the Council. Whie and I found you while making a food trade. You were observing the handoff on Malastare, trying to figure out how to get in touch with Mirax without her thinking you crazy.”

Decent cover story. “You actually dealt with Mirax?”

“No, I thought I’d just name someone who wasn’t anywhere near the tradeoff.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I dealt with Mirax. She was worried about me after I ran off on them a few months back.”

She must’ve caught Mara’s expression, because she explained, “She thinks I’m some orphan Corran picked up on one of his runs.”

Mara stared. “ _Corran_ knows?”

“We needed a contact somewhere who could integrate some of us close to your Order, so we can protect you when the Darksiders move in.”

That at least some of the old Order was bothering to try to keep the new one safe made her feel better about dealing with them. But still… “Corran knows?”

“Not about _you_ ,” Scout answered, drawing to a stop across the street from the small building that had the Force presence consistent with their destination. “Do you want him to? He only knows about me because…”

She ran her own braid through her fingers, staring at the sand.

“He recognized you,” Whie said quietly.

Scout sighed heavily. “Yeah.”

Whie looked out over the crowd and bustle of the city. “Your son’s alive, you know.”

She whipped her head towards him and nearly tripped over her own feet. “You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”

He shook his head. “I’m not. I met him. He’s Naksía’s stepfather.”

“But her parents are…” ‘Horrified’ was the best word to sum up her expression. “Her mother is older than _me_. They’d be _decades_ apart.”

“About three, yeah,” Whie said. “I think they might have a kid of their own.”

“Who they’d be hiding from Eirtaé’s biological father. Right. Huh.” Scout rubbed her eyes. “My kid’s alive.” She didn’t quite sound happy about it.

Whie winced. He glanced at Mara with a keenness that said he was bringing up the matter on purpose, for a reason beyond informing his friend. “His dad’s alive, too.”

The bleakness in the girl’s expression confirmed that the old Order was still very much anti-attachments and relationships, no matter what they would tell _her_.

Mara gave Whie a little nod, clapped Scout on the shoulder, and strode forth to meet the leaders of the old Jedi Order.

**Author's Note:**

> So is this fun, or is this just too darn weird? XD


End file.
